Tag Archive

Sam van Zweden

An image of a spoon against a background of chocolate frosting

The Enduring Hero of Matilda is Bruce Bogtrotter

Sam van Zweden, Island, Issue 160

Sam van Zweden talks about Roald Dahl’s Matilda in relation to a corpus of children’s literature aimed at discouraging greed and teaching restraint.

I’m coming to realise Bruce was the icon we didn’t know we had, who showed us the power of appetite and body autonomy by eating a whole, heavy, gooey chocolate cake, made with real butter and real cream.

Read more

The Circular is a project of The Sydney Review of Books. We’re supported by the Australia Council’s Sector Recovery Initiative fund.

We send a weekly newsletter featuring the most interesting, useful and surprising recent non-fiction published by and about Australian writers.

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation, and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.